by Avery Flynn
That was a new one, and he had no idea what in the hell to do with that, which meant that their quick post-sex clean-up in the bathroom was quiet as well as fast.
“Are you okay?” she asked as she swiped some Chapstick across her lips. “You just went from dirty-talking fuck machine to silent mode.”
He laughed. “Do you ever not say what’s on your mind?”
“Occasionally just to freak people out.” She opened the bathroom door a crack and peeked out. “Coast is clear.”
They walked out into what he assumed was a break room of some sort. There were windows on one end of the room, and he peeked through the closed blinds. There had to be a hundred people out there already. His boys were already set up working the booths. Phillips was handing out miniature fishing poles to kids trying to hook floating rings that would earn them a goldfish swimming in a plastic baggie.
“So we have to go out there?” he asked as he turned around to face her.
Fallon gave him a sassy grin and picked up the wet suit. “Your public awaits.”
Yeah, he was not looking forward to putting that thing on. In fact, he didn’t remember agreeing to a dunk tank. He was about to open his mouth and point that fact out, but the smile on Fallon’s mouth shut him straight up. He didn’t want to do anything to ruin that.
Hell. He was fucked. She was his Lady Luck. He wasn’t an idiot, he knew it was just a superstition, but without that, what draw would he have to keep talking to her and touching her and being with her? Even if she was the type to go for him for the money, she knew his secret that he didn’t have any. She sure wasn’t drawn to him because of his fame or his personality. The sex, though—they both enjoyed the hell out of that. Maybe if he could figure out how to keep that going, he could ensure she’d stay interested—not forever, his parents had driven that message home with a Mack truck, but for a while. Was that too much to ask?
Clearing his throat, he shook all the touchy-feely, old wounds shit out of his head. “I’m pretty sure your brothers are out there fighting with my teammates to see who gets to be first at throwing softballs at the bullseye to send me into the dunk tank.”
“Probably.” She held out the suit.
It took him all of three steps to cross the room and take it from her when what he really wanted to do was toss the suit down to the table again, throw her over his shoulder, and take her back to his place. “And what are you going to be doing while I’m doing that?”
Rising up on her tiptoes, she gave him a soft kiss that packed a harder punch than any he’d taken on the ice. “I’m going to sneak to the front of the line while all the boys are arguing amongst themselves.”
Now that sounded exactly like something Fallon would do. She really was nobody’s fool. “We need to talk after this.”
She cocked her head to one side. “About what?”
“Us.” Shit, he hadn’t meant to say that; it just sort of came out.
Concern flittered across her face, and she took a step back. “Zach—”
“Don’t say anything now,” he cut her off, hating the way her hesitation twisted his gut into a knot. “Just hear me out later. That’s all I ask.”
“I can do that.” She gave him another kiss that sent a shockwave straight to his dick and walked over to the door before pausing halfway through it. “Remember to watch out when you’re in that dunk tank because I’ve got a mean fastball.”
And with that, she disappeared out the door.
All the oxygen in the room came back in a hot blast, nearly knocking him on his ass. This was insanity—and yet he couldn’t get the very unnatural-feeling grin off his face, one that remained on his face when he walked out of the break room in the wet suit a few minutes later and ran smack into Marty. The photographer was leaning up against the wall, a single camera strung around his neck.
Unease slithered up Zach’s spine, and he fought the urge to stop in his tracks. If Marty was here, there was a reason for it, and it wasn’t to cover the clinic’s fundraiser.
“You trolling the charity beat now, man?” Zach asked, keeping his tone friendly as he started down the hall toward the door leading to the back parking lot where the booths were set up.
“I go where the story is,” the photographer said, keeping step with Zach. “Word is your parents are making a comeback.”
Bile rose in his throat, burning the back of his mouth, but he managed not to falter in his steps. “What do you mean?”
“They’re trying—so far unsuccessfully—to lock down other hockey players as management clients, using you as an example of what they can do,” Marty said. “Of course, they aren’t your managers anymore. Why is that?”
Zach stopped and pivoted until he was face-to-face with the photographer. Marty might work the gossip side of the business now, but he’d supposedly been an award-winning investigative journalist at one point. According to Lucy, the man could smell a good story and fear—which were kind of the same thing. That meant Zach’s only option was to brazen it out, as if the idea of his parents getting their claws into some rookie wasn’t the most terrifying thing he’d ever heard in his life—one he’d have to find a way to stop. There was no way his parents could ever be allowed to do to some kid what they’d done to him.
Looking down, Zach gave the other man a smile that wasn’t the least bit friendly. “You really should stick to gossip photos. You’re starting to see stories where there aren’t any.”
“That’s not what my sources say.”
“Are your sources Bobby and Donna Blackburn?” It wouldn’t surprise him. Honestly, he hoped they were, because they were just the sort of people to make up mystery players they couldn’t name out loud because they didn’t exist.
Marty shrugged. “A journalist never tells.”
The happy screams of kids filtered in from outside as they fished for prizes and tossed balls into milk jugs for stuffed animals. Through the door’s window, he spotted Stuckey sitting at the autograph booth putting a kid up on his shoulders and making a goofy face while the kid’s mom took their picture. It was all so fucking wholesome it made his gut twitch.
Yeah, your parents didn’t fuck your head at all, did they, Blackburn?
Letting out a deep breath, he turned his focus back to the photographer. “There’s no story, Marty.”
“It’s a sensitive subject, I can see that.” He made a whatcha-gonna-do face. “Still, it doesn’t do my bank account any good to walk away with nothing. How about, as a sign of friendship, you agree to an exclusive of you and Lady Luck kissing. Nothing more, just a sweet kiss for all the folks in Harbor City rooting for you two to be dating for real. And I will help shush the rumors I keep hearing about your parents. One friend helping out another.”
Zach’s blood pressure went from one to burn-the-world-down in half a second as he imagined using Fallon like that. And what are you doing now with the Lady Luck bullshit, Blackburn? Frustration, rage, and guilt slammed together inside of him, and he didn’t think. He just reacted, grabbing Marty by the shirt and shoving him up against the wall hard enough that the pictures hanging there shook.
He got right in the photographer’s face. “Are you trying to blackmail me?”
Beads of sweat popped out on the other man’s forehead, but his snarl stayed in place. “Just trying to earn a living.”
“Go earn it somewhere else.” He let go of Marty’s shirt and stepped back, his own rage making his breath hard.
A blast of cool air hit his overheated skin as the door to the outside opened and shut. Cameron stood just inside the door holding his daughter Bianca’s hand. Her big brown eyes were round as she regarded him with fear-tinged shock. It was completely different from the trusting admiration she’d shown when he’d rescued her from the lava floor earlier, and the difference made Zach wince.
“Everything okay?” Cameron asked, looking from him to Marty and back again.
“Just a little difference of opinion,” Zach said.
“Y
eah, my friend was here the whole time.” Marty glanced left to the other end of the hall, where a second photographer stood half-concealed in an exam room doorway. “It’s good to have friends, Blackburn. Too bad you don’t understand that.”
Zach stood there, his hands curled into fists, as Marty and the other photographer walked away. Cameron gave him a curious look but headed past him toward the waiting room where the clowns were set up. Bianca scooted past him, holding her daddy’s hand tight as if Zach wasn’t an ice knight but a lava monster instead.
The kid probably wasn’t wrong.
…
Fallon was not the first in line at the dunk tank. By the time she made it over there, after manning the free blood pressure screening booth for the past two hours, there was a line fifteen deep.
“Is everyone taking extra shots?” she asked the woman at the end of the line.
“Nah, Cole Phillips said he’d send autographed pucks to anyone who dunked Blackburn five times.”
Okay, that was pretty damn funny, especially considering the smack talk coming out of Zach’s mouth right now as a guy in a Cajun Rage T-shirt wound up and shot a zinger that still managed to miss the bullseye. That was pretty damn generous of Cole. All of the ticket money for the extra opportunities to dunk Zach would be going to the clinic’s food pantry fund, which, judging by the length of the line and how soaked Zach appeared, was going to be substantial.
“Looks like his plan is working,” Fallon said.
The woman brushed her dark hair back behind her ears and gave her a conspiratorial grin. “This is the shortest the line’s been in the past hour.”
Mr. Cajun Rage fired off another softball at the target right as Zach was badmouthing the Louisiana team’s defensive strategy (which he was totally on the money about) and connected. Zach went down with a huge splash that got some of the folks closest to the tank wet.
“So you look totally familiar.” The woman held out her hand. “I’m Marti. I’m Cole Phillips’s girlfriend.” She rolled her eyes. “Well, at least I am this week. We’ve had this whole on-and-off thing for a million years and—Oh my God!” Her green eyes went big and buggy. “I know where I know you from now. You’re Lady Luck.”
Busted.
She took the other woman’s hand. “Fallon Hartigan.”
“You have the most amazing skin,” she said, peering closer at Fallon. “If I had your skin, I wouldn’t put anything on it, either, besides moisturizer. You have got to tell me what you use.”
“Whatever is on sale at Target.” Which was about as specific as she could get beyond the white bottle with the green writing and an illustration of a butterfly on it.
“You’re killing me, Fallon.” Marti sighed dramatically and slapped her hand over her heart. “I am dying right here of jealousy. Are you really a nurse like they say, so you can keep me from keeling over?”
She didn’t mean to laugh, but it was hard not to. The woman was seriously over-the-top. Gina and the girls would adore her. “Yeah, I volunteer here, but I work at St. Vincent’s.”
“Go you,” Marti said as she fiddled with the strap of her crossbody bag decorated to look like a pair of owl eyes. “I am euphemistically between jobs at the moment, meaning my post-doctorate unpaid internship has not resulted in a job offer so I am living with my parents. Again. It’s awful. Nothing like moving back home when you’re twenty-seven.”
Considering that was Fallon’s personal nightmare and where she would have ended up had Frankie not moved in with Lucy, she could commiserate. “That sucks.”
“Tell me about it.” Marti stepped in close and lowered her voice. “So you and Zach, huh? What’s going on there? Wait.” She held up her hand and shook her head. “Don’t tell me. It’s none of my business. Sorry, bad habit. My family is a little in everyone’s business, which is really annoying when your boyfriend of the moment works for your dad. That’s not awkward at all.”
Fallon was laughing for real now. Just the idea of dating one of the probies in her dad’s firehouse made her want to hurl. And the questions from her mom would be intense, to put it mildly.
“Now that, I can totally understand,” she said once she caught her breath. “My mom is like a one-woman Spanish Inquisition.”
“We must be related somewhere along the family tree, and as such, you need to take this.” Marti reached into her bag and pulled out a small card. “Good for one mani-pedi and a personal styling session at Dylan’s Department Store.”
Her stomach, still a little sore from laughing, sank like a lead weight. Here, female human who obviously doesn’t understand this whole how-to-be-a-real-woman thing, let me fix that mistake, the card practically screamed at her.
“Thanks, I’m not really…”
“Oh no, take it.” Marti waved the card in her direction. “It’s the friends and family card, and I have a ton of them because Dylan’s is an Ice Knights sponsor and they give a ton of these freebie cards to the team. It’s not like my dad is going to go do a mani/pedi, even though he could totally use one, so they end up with me. You never know when you’ll want a fun girls’ day and—” Her face fell, and she crumpled the card in her hand. “Oh my God. I just realized what I did.” She closed her eyes, tilted her chin skyward, and let out a sigh before focusing on Fallon again. “I am the queen of saying the wrong thing the absolute worst way. I did not mean that you needed a makeover. Shit. After all of the comments you’ve been getting online.” She paused and seemed to register what must have been a look of total confusion on Fallon’s face because that was what she had swirling about inside her head.
Comments?
Marti grimaced. “And I did it again. Because you haven’t seen today’s comments. And now you’ll go looking for them, or at least wonder about them, and it’s all because I’m a giant dumbass with six toes on my right foot. Thanks, Dad.”
Something clicked in Fallon’s head as she looked at the dark-haired woman with the sixty-mile-an-hour mouth. “Dad as in Coach Peppers?”
“Yep.” Marti nodded. “Of all the creepy things to pass down to your kid, six toes has to be the weirdest. I don’t know. Maybe a third nipple. But I’m off track. Please forgive me. I didn’t mean to be a bitch about the whole makeover thing. Sometimes—okay, most times—my mouth moves way faster than my brain. I’m sorry.” She grabbed Fallon’s hands between hers. “Really, I am.”
In the emergency room, a person got used to reading people on the quick and discerning the lies—from the embarrassing, like I don’t know how that action figure got there, to the awful, like it wasn’t my husband, I walked into a door—in ten words or less. So she didn’t need the billion-and-half that had come out of Marti’s mouth in one long, run-on sentence to realize the other woman was being sincere.
“It’s okay,” Fallon said. Because what was she gonna do? Scream about the tyranny of pink lipstick and false eyelashes? “That whole girlie-girl thing is really not my thing, but my friends and I do a Paint and Sip night once a week or so. You should come.”
“Oh, I am in.” She dropped Fallon’s hands and gave her a quick hug. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go sink Blackburn for the fifth time today.”
“You don’t want a signed puck, do you?” She was the coach’s daughter and dating—sorta—a player, so getting a signed puck should be the equivalent of Fallon getting a signed Waterbury Fire Department calendar (not that she wanted one, because ewwwwwwww).
“Nah.” Marti plucked a softball from the bucket of three she must have gotten when she’d bought her dunk tank ticket. “I promised Cole I’d dunk Zach as often as I could today. I was a fast-pitch champion in college, so my arm is wicked good.” She let out an ornery laugh as she waggled her eyebrows. “That man is going down a lot.”
Giggling, Fallon looked over at the dunk tank, where Zach was climbing back up on the chair that collapsed every time someone hit the bullseye. “I almost feel bad for him.”
He sat down in the chair, and his gaze locked
with hers, and a shiver went through her that had nothing to do with the fall temperatures and everything to do with the man who she definitely should not be thinking about every third second, let alone fucking in the bathroom.
“Oh, girl.” Marti shook her head. “You’ve got it bad.”
“We’re just sorta friends.” Which didn’t sound like a lame lie at all.
Marti looked from Zach, who was doing his best badass smolder that made Fallon’s nipples pucker, which was pretty impressive considering he was in a wet suit sitting on a collapsible platform, and back to Fallon. Whatever she saw, it put a sympathetic smile on her face.
“Whatever you say, Fallon.” Then she turned and walked up to the chalked throwing line and let loose with a hard pitch that landed against the bullseye with a thwack.
And as the platform collapsed and Zach went down into the water, Fallon couldn’t help but wonder if she was falling just as hard and fast.
Chapter Eighteen
Zach’s house was empty and quiet after how loud and crowded the locker room had been after the latest Ice Knights’ win.
People had been laughing, music blared, and some asshole had put a bobblehead doll of him in a plastic bin of water. A few months ago, he would have snarled at the perpetrator. Now, though, things felt different. He’d, instead, dumped the water over Petrov’s head in retaliation. Of course, the reporters in the room got a cell phone shot of it, and the scene of all of them laughing at Petrov looking half drowned made Sports Center before Stuckey even dropped him off at home.
Now, he was walking around his empty house with his post-game cheat of a pint of mint chocolate chip. The ice cream was delicious as usual, but he didn’t get his usual thought-quieting buzz. Why? Because instead of Fallon in her usual seat on the other side of the glass at the Ice Knights Arena, it had been a guy who looked like a retired accountant wearing a Lady Luck sash. Yeah, the view was definitely not as good as when Fallon was there.